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It’s almost time for perfect hiking weather! If Jackson Park isn’t rural enough for your taste, here are a few options for serious woodland acreage, available to Hyde Parkers by public transit. The Des Plains River Trail spans across two systems of forest preserves. The Lake County Forest Preserve system has the northern half of(…)

Although a character from a certain liquor commercial lays claim to the title “most interesting man in the world” (don’t get the reference?), we at HeraldBlog feel it belongs to two-time contributor Kenneth Xavier Zehir. Here is the second of his incredibly debonair series on smoking pipes. It’s transcribed below as received in the mail,(…)

Wednesday, April 3, 2013. We’ve decided to start slowly, close to home, rather than rushing out to see Sicily’s most famous sights all at once. Jet lag being what it is, and lingering on our terrace in the warm sunlight with morning coffee (espresso and hot milk) being so enjoyable, we don’t get out of(…)

Sometimes, you need to look at a couple hills of tall grass. Surprisingly, you can do that right here. On 47th and Cornell, just behind a parking lot, you’ll find the entrance to a small but pleasantly secluded park, part of the Park District’s Burnham Park. . Features run- or walk-able paths and a boardwalk, along(…)

“City of the world (for all races are here) City of tall facades of marble and iron, Proud and passionate city.” These lines, excerpted from the Walt Whitman poem “City of Ships,” open the 1921 avant-garde film Manhatta, showing at Doc Films on Wednesday, August 21, as part of a collection of “city symphonies.” In(…)

Editor’s note: Yasmine Laasraoui, Herald Intern, has been writing for HeraldBlog and the print newspaper for the summer. Interning at the Herald has given me the opportunity to explore Hyde Park, a historic and culturally diverse neighborhood and an area of Chicago I’ve never really taken the time to visit. (Despite its being the home(…)

Here’s an ad that ran in the Herald’s June 14, 1967 issue. But weren’t the Blackstone Rangers a gang? In the summer of 1967, the Rangers, one of Chicago’s most powerful gangs, had made peace—and they were producing a musical. Directed by nationally famous activist and singer Oscar Brown, the Rangers starred in “Opportunity(…)

How do you measure love? Hyde Parker (and President of the United States) Barack Obama doesn’t need a expert to answer that question. He can head over to 53rd and Dorchester, where his love for his wife Michelle Obama can be measured in pounds. The “Obama Kissing Rock” monument weighs in at 3,000 pounds (1.5(…)

The story is pretty familiar to anyone who paid attention to the news four years ago, especially if you were in California at the time. On January 1, 2009, after a night of celebrating the new year in San Francisco, 22-year-old Oscar Grant was shot and killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer(…)

Hyde Park Graffiti Museum

Graffiti Wall

Previous Graffiti Wall Stories

Wall demo will leave vacuumJul 17, 2013The graffiti wall on 53rd Street has been an artistic outlet and medium for a generation of Hyde Park and South Side

Founder on permission wallJul 13, 2013First, a little basic history on the ongoing permission wall behind the Mobil gas station in Hyde Park. We always called it “the Mobil wall,” “53rd Street” or the “Hyde Park wall.” I

Wall thrives through respectJul 10, 2013The graffiti wall behind the Mobil station along 53rd Street has operated in the grey area between legal and illegal since the early ‘90s. But for the bulk of that time it has been a generally